Many were going to die no matter what. Time to decide was rapidly running out. Cerise was shouting the chants now and getting close to the point where he would name the demon. I pushed onto my elbow and struggled up to my knees, fighting the increasing weakness. Cerise paid no attention to me. His full focus was on the summoning.
But the demon was paying attention. His eyes snapped to me as I opened my mouth. He shrieked in rage, bounding across the distance to me as I put the full force of my will into the call. You have to mean it, I remembered my aunt saying.
“RHYZKAHL!” I screamed through the chants.
And time stood still for a heartbeat.
The demon gave an enraged scream, leaping at me and slicing at me with clawed hands. He knows. He knows what I’ve done. I struggled to twist away from him, but his speed was beyond belief. I felt a sharp tug across my chest and on my belly, then a surreal sensation of lightness. There was no pain. It was only the slow-motion vision of the blood spraying and my belly emptying itself before me onto the tile that told me what had happened.
The demon screamed again, spreading his wings as the brilliant runes suddenly went dark.
There was no pain. I collapsed onto my side, seeing the coiled mounds of my bowels beyond my body amid the spreading stain of blood. I’m not dead. But I would be soon. Had I called him in time? Sounds echoed strangely. I thought I heard Ryan shouting. I knew I heard Cerise.
“What have you done?” he screamed. He spun to face me, enraged. “You fucking bitch! What have you done? Where is he? What did you do?”
I turned my head lazily and smiled up at him. “I’ve got your Demonic Lord right here,” I rasped. “Bitch.”
Chapter 29
Light flared again, but not from the runes surrounding the circle. I knew I had only a couple of minutes to live, but I wasn’t going to miss this for the world.
Rhyzkahl stepped forward, dressed in dazzling white robes, eerie blue and gold light shimmering around him. I had a supreme vantage point and could see the expression on Cerise’s face as he registered the fact that the Demonic Lord was here but was most assuredly not within the circle or contained by any of his bindings.
Rhyzkahl gave a low growl that crawled through the floor and echoed off the walls. I could feel the strangling aura of power and fury streaming off him, but it barely seemed to affect me. I’m dying, that’s why, I decided, with remarkable calm. My innards are on the floor in front of me. Nothing can scare me now.
Cerise was not so fortunate. He could feel the full effect of Rhyzkahl, and I knew it wasn’t the first time he had felt it. He gibbered in terror, stumbling back and scrabbling until he came to the wall where he huddled, head down, whimpering.
Rhyzkahl turned slowly, assessing, gaze pausing on the reyza. His eyes flashed with power as he said something to the demon in a harsh guttural language.
The demon responded in the same language, prostrating himself before Rhyzkahl. I had no idea what either had said, but I could guess the gist of it.
Rhyzkahl’s lip curled in a silent snarl and he lifted his hand before him, opening it and then slowing squeezing it shut into a fist. The demon screamed, writhing in obvious agony before the lord. He arched his back, shuddering, and then abruptly flared with a crackling white light that seemed to stream from a thousand breaks in his skin. The light expanded into a blinding incandescence, then a heartbeat later the familiar ripping crack filled the room and the demon was gone. Not dead, I thought hazily, smelling ozone and sulfur, just sent back to be dealt with later.
Rhyzkahl’s gaze finally came to rest on me. I could feel him assessing me, measuring the breaths of life that I had left. I met his eyes, even as the dull roaring in my ears began to grow louder and the gray began to close in on my vision.
He stepped to me and crouched. “Ah, my dear Kara. When I had finally decided you were of no further use to me, then you prove otherwise. Resourceful and clever.” He turned his dazzling smile on me and stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. The gray receded a breath as the dizziness faded. Returning my stolen essence to me, I realized. Buying me a few more minutes.
“So now you call me to you.” He lifted his head, taking a deep breath. “And now you are slain. But that one,” and he gestured toward the sniveling Cerise, “would have contained me had you not called me.” He stood. “And thus I find myself in the most unpleasant circumstance of being in your debt.” He gave a soft laugh, not seeming at all displeased. He stepped to the edge of the diagram that had been painted in my blood.
“I am here in this sphere, unfettered, dearest one.”
I could only pant raggedly. Breath was harder to come by with every second, and the pool of blood before me continued to widen.
“And you lie before me, eviscerated most unpleasantly.”
What, there’s a pleasant way to be eviscerated? I thought, though I had no strength left to voice it. But at least I could die with sarcasm.
“A choice for you, then, in payment of my debt.” He turned back to me. “I can return myself to my sphere, relinquishing this opportunity to gain power in this realm.” He nudged a section of my bowels with the tip of his boot. “Or I can restore you. Choose.”
I sucked breath with effort. I’d already accepted that I was dying. I already knew the calm of it. And there was no way that I could let him roam free in this world.
I shook my head. It was probably just a millimeter of motion, but it was enough to tell him my choice.
He laughed softly. “And for once you are predictable. Very well. I will return myself to my own demesne.” He strode over to Peter Cerise and seized him up by his hair.
“No!” Ryan shouted from within the circle. “No, you have to help her. Restore her!”
Rhyzkahl paused, then slowly turned to look at Ryan. He lowered his head. “And what do you offer me in exchange?”
I could see Ryan swallow and go pale, unprepared for the full force of Rhyzkahl’s potency.
“Me,” he gasped out. “She deserves to live through this. She defeated Cerise. She kept you from being imprisoned!”
Rhyzkahl inclined his head a fraction. “And I have already resolved that debt.” His eyes flashed. “And you would give yourself over to me that she might live?”
“No!” Had I managed to say it out loud? I was so cold. He couldn’t give himself. He didn’t know what he was offering! Ah, shit, Ryan, no. Just let me go. It’s all right.
Rhyzkahl turned his head to regard me, the summoner dangling from his grip like a kitten in the jaws of its mother. “Ah, so poetic. ‘No! Save the other in my stead!’” His smile was beautiful, but his voice mocked us both. “As tempting as your offer is,” he said to Ryan as he calmly set Cerise on his feet and wrapped an arm around him, holding Cerise’s back to his chest, “you are not fully aware of yourself.” Rhyzkahl wrapped his other arm around the whimpering Cerise’s head, then, as easily as twisting a stem from an apple, pulled off the man’s head. He dropped both head and twitching body to the floor at his feet, completely oblivious to the blood that sprayed over him, staining his white garments in chaotic patterns. “It would not be an equal repayment, even as treasured as Kara is.”
My eyelids drifted downward, too far gone to even be horrified by the gruesome means of Cerise’s death. My breath flowed out of me, and I had no need or desire to take another. It’s all right, Ryan. It’s all right.
“Come home with me, Kara.” Rhyzkahl reached down with a blood-covered hand and grasped mine. A flash of white light surrounded us, and then we were elsewhere.
I was lying on what appeared to be a dais, in front of a throne of white and gold stone carved in a familiar pattern. I was dimly aware of a sharp, tangy, and not entirely unpleasant smell and an unfamiliar language being spoken above me. I could see white marble walls beyond the dais, graced by vast open archways surrounded by intricate burnished gold ornamentation. Through one archway was a broad balcony and a distant turquoise sea set aglow by the rays of a rising or setting sun. Above the sea were figures in flight, and I realized with awe that I was seeing zhurn and graa and syraza wheeling above the sea in an intricate dance of wings and air, claws and teeth.
Just past the throne was what looked like a nude woman with hair that flowed to the floor, but the segmented wings like a beetle’s on her back and the mass of twining strands where a tongue should be told me this was a mehnta. To her right was a coiling of smoke and teeth and shifting colors, a demon I recognized as an ilius.
I was dying, but this almost made it all worth it, to see the demons, to see their realm, their home. This wasn’t how I had pictured the demon realm at all, and I realized with chagrin that I had fallen into the same trap as those who assumed all demons were evil. I’d pictured the demon realm to be a dark place of fire and rock, but this was beauty and elegance, more like a vision of what heaven might be. How many humans have ever seen this?
I barely had strength to keep my eyes open any longer, but I could sense as much as see Rhyzkahl crouch before me.
“Ah, dear one. I cannot restore you. You are too far gone for that, and even I have limits to my power.”
It’s all right, I thought, dimly seeing sparkles of light at the edge of my vision. So this is really the demon realm?
“Yes, dearest, this is my demesne. Would that I could keep you here as mine, but even here you are dying.”
Too bad I can’t see more of the place. Oh, well. The sparkles of light grew brighter and more insistent.
“There will be another time for that. I cannot restore you, but I will give you a chance. More chance than you had. I have taken the payment I wish for this already.”
Confusion muddled through me even as the light grew brighter, obscuring all else. Chance? Payment? No, not Ryan!
I heard a melodious laugh just before a ripping crack obscured all else.
Chapter 30
The void was nothingness. Not light or dark, but the absence of all reference. No color, no sound, no touch. I drifted for a time, seconds stretching to eternity, aware of the void and feeling the expectation, the anticipation of something more, something beyond the void.
But the nothingness swallowed sensation and thought alike, and I gradually ceased to wonder.
Come on, Sweets. You can’t stay. You don’t belong here. You need to keep going.
Going?
Yes, keep going through. Go on through, sweetling. You’re doing just fine.
I am?
You always have. I’m so proud of you.
Where am I going?
Through. Go on through.
Through?
He’s calling you. Just follow his call.
Too easy to lose the way.
Too hard to keep from unraveling when there’s nothing to remind you of who you are and where you should be.
Another eternity passes in the flick of an eyelash.
Kara. Kara, you need to come back.
A feathery touch on the edge of my essence.
Come on, Kara. Find your way back. You’ve been gone long enough.
A flickering awareness of self. Curiosity. Emotions and awareness creeping back in gradually.
Kara. Kara. Come back. You can do it. Come back to me.
The presence. A rich familiarity.
Kara. It’s time. Come back.
Come back? Where? Oh. Right. Through.
I felt cold in the nothingness, the icy tendrils wrapped around me noticeable only because I actually felt the cold. Then pain seared through me, staggering in the abrupt shift from nothing to razor-sharp coils of agony twisting around me. I screamed into the nothingness as the pain increased past the point where I was certain that I should cease to feel anything. No, I’m dying. I’m dead. It’s not supposed to hurt anymore! Molten lava swept through my veins, my bones twisted and shattered, only to be flung back together. A demon clawed and tugged at my belly, tearing me apart. I heard a ripping crack.
And then it was gone.
I took a dragging wretched breath in, lungs searing as if they’d never drawn breath before. I smelled ozone and felt a dull throb of pain in my right shoulder and cold floor against my cheek and hip. I heard shouts and voices around me and then felt hands on me. I fought to open my eyes, struggling to blink away the fuzziness that filled my vision.
Snatches of speech came through the haze.
“… call EMS!”
“Holy shit … thought she was dead …”
I felt a sheet or blanket being wrapped around me. The pain in my shoulder receded, and I realized that it had been from my arm being twisted awkwardly up behind me. Had I fallen? Nothing made sense. What happened to being dead?
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I heard a vaguely familiar voice. “It’s her. Holy shit, it’s Kara. Someone call Agent Kristoff!”
“Where …” I tried to say, but nothing seemed to come out. “What’s going on?” I tried again.
“She’s awake! Kara! Come on, Kara. Open your eyes so you can tell us what the hell happened to you!”
I groaned and struggled to lift the obscene weight of my eyelids. Vague blurs coalesced in front of me, and in the distance I could hear someone shouting something about an ambulance.
“I thought I was dead,” I croaked out, successfully this time. Or so I hoped.
A weak laugh. “So did everyone else, chick.” It was Jill. That was Jill’s voice. “Can’t wait to hear you explain this one. We found your blood on the scene. Lots of it.”
“I was dead,” I repeated. My vision slowly began to clear. The blur above me took on vague facial features.
Jill patted my shoulder. “You’ve been gone, that’s for sure.”
I could hear sirens approaching. “Gone? Just a coupla minutes. I died for just a little while.”